How often will a young child want the same book read or watch the same movie and why do they do this?

I wanted to provide a little insight into one of the practical aspects of this little thing (training philosophy) we call The Method. Why do we play the training plan again and again, in other words why do we REPEAT?

We realize that repetition is a vitally important ingredient for developing skills, and for learning or memorizing certain things but we neglect to go deep enough to see what is does for our understanding.

Back to the children, they always want MORE because each time they discover — key word: discover — more. When we repeat a training plan over and over, it’s amazing what you can find, learn and feel when you decide to look closely enough.

The first handful of times you repeat a session/plan, you are only just getting into the routine or swing of things but even then, you’ll start to notice little subtleties in the impact from other things.

If you explore deeply (repeat over and over), rather then widely (changing often), you’ll develop a greater understanding of your training. With the sessions being KNOWN, you can start to see the impact from other sessions. Did dinner last night help or hinder? How much sleep did I get? How was my attitude going into the session?  What are my stress levels like? And any number of other factors that present you with huge learning opportunities to continually refine your approach so that you get more and more out of each time you repeat that session.

There are some typical stages that an athlete goes through when following a repetitive approach:

1. First there is curiosity and excitement, as it’s new and different to what you have done before and you’re eager to find out how it’s going to make you improve.

2. The secrets of the repetitive nature, start to show up. Increased consistency, you feel better, recover better, you have better time management and you see improvements.

3. The curiosity and interest may begin to fade (even though you’re still improving). This is caused mainly by the big misconception in our sport that training plans need to constantly change to surprise or shock our bodies into further progression. That’s just plain B.S!

4. Keep going anyway - find that self discipline and don’t be eager to change. This is where you catapult yourself to that next level. This is where you need to think long term, because in the longer term it will pay off.

5. Hooked - you have got over the eagerness to change as your further exploration and understanding starts to reveal more and more secrets, you become more skilled, you learn how eke more out of each session and make it more useful.

How to make repetition work

Athletes outsource coaches to help them achieve their goals, to learn more and to get better. Repetition needs to be matched with strong intention — keyword: intention — when you have strong intention to get better, learn more and achieve those goals, these things will gradually happen.

Without intention you’ll find yourself getting bored, gaps will start to appear, mistakes will be made and funnily enough REPEATED!

The final question is not can you make repetition work for you but WILL you work it to let it work it’s magic on you?

Be your Best!

Kristian

IM China turned out to be a pure race of survival with even the mens champion reduced to a walk over the final kilometres! The mercury hit 45 degrees but it wasn’t just the heat. First athletes battled a 2km/hr current, then wind and heat on the bike followed by the scorching temps on the run.

Charlotte Paul just seemed to dominate in these conditions, citing a change in outlook during the race to a thought process recently learned from Michael Phelps book ‘No Limits’ which was - what’s important now! Those three words kept Charlotte focused on the necessity of hydration and keeping cool. This strategy not only helped her to a second Ironman win, but one where she was 5th across the line and ran the fastest split of the day -overall!

Now the times werent fast, but put into perspective when Ironman World Champion Chris McCormack said “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done” after winning thew 70.3 and his run split was a 1:27! You know times mean nothing…

For a full report on ironguides athletes click here and for Charlottes report click here

Kristian

Ironman Australia:

Race week at Ironman Australia had rumours flying around about a potential duathlon, or cancelled swim due to the flood conditions on the mid north coast of NSW. These were just the typical race week rumours that fly around. IMG not deterred put on a great event. Around 3 am race morning the rain was coming down hard but cleared by the time athletes arrived to get body marked and set up in T1. The age group gun went 35mins after the pros and then ironguides athletes went out and did what they do best… setting personal bests

2 weeks after setting his new PB at the 70.3 distance in Singapore, Grant O’Halloran went 12h12 for a 1h30 PB since IMWA in December 2009. Note that Grant started working with ironguides in January 2009. That would have been a good performance already, but on the top of this, Grant had a crash on the second lap of the bike descending at 50k/h, went to the medical tent twice to get strap for blisters and made the local newspaper today for this “long day out”. Whew. So much for an ironman!

Chris Dimtrieff after a bad swim and solo bike got off and ran a PB IM marathon and 2nd fastest run of the day (2:50) to get himself into 9th overall from a LONG way back. Great to see that Chris didn’t let the non optimal swim completely ruin his day. He said when he got onto the run his legs just wanted to go… and go they did!

Kevin Lucas had the PB of the day! 2nd IM and 6 months of ironguides coaching … 9:57:07 taking a massive 1h 35min off his previous best time…

Anthony Osment 14min PB from IM WA in December. Going 10:02 in IM Australia and just missing going sub 10 (seems he lost 8mins in nature break stops on the bike). Oz took 28 minutes off his bike split and ~ 30mins off his run split from the same course as last year!

Marie Doke also ~ 14min PB from same course as last year and went 11:16 and 2nd in her AG. Marie didnt take up her Kona spot though.

Kevin Bloor, what can we say here… Kevin late last year wanted to do a triathlon, so he signed up for the Noosa Tri (Olympic Distance) in November 08, loved it and 1 week later did his first Half Ironman… From there his sights were set on IM Australia some 4 months later. Kevin went a stunning 11:36 in his first ever Ironman, I might add Kevin is 55! He absolutely loved it… show’s anything IS possible.

Judith Golledge unfortunately crashed hard on a steep section of road due to some paint on the road that got real slippery when the rain started to come down. Judith tried to continue on but eventually had to call it a day. Judith will now recover and is looking forward to training for 70.3 world Champs later in the year.

Ben Atkins who bought a 20 week IM plan - not sure how big a PB but I know it was pretty decent.. Unfortunately the poor bugger went 10:00:08 — just couldnt run hard enough down the chute.

And finally Simon Webber knocked up his 10th IM Australia to become an IM Australia Legend in 11:50.

Congrats to all.

Alwyn was answering the question: Is losing weight easy? His answer was the title above. It’s SIMPLE, but not easy.

That got me thinking about triathlon; Is getting great results in triathlon easy? You may guess the answer because of the title and that is, yes it’s pretty simple, but it’s not easy.

When it comes to performance enhancement we all pretty much know what to do, and how to do it. But what trips most of us up is putting it all together. Lets have a look at some of the most important but simple things.

Nutrition: Undeniably, the less weight you have to carry around, the faster you are going to go. Period. All the high tech gadgetry in the world is not going to help you if you’re lugging around excess body fat. If you fill your diet with lean proteins, fruit, vegetables, good fats and only consume sugars and starches during and immediately after training, it’s going to have a profound impact on your health and triathlon results. That’s fairly simple, but it’s not easy!

Body maintenance: I have written about this in the past, as I believe this is the most underutilized area of improvement. There are enormous benefits to sleeping 7-8 hours a night and looking after your muscle tissue health through regular massage or self massage with TP Therapy Tools. Again simple, but not easy.

Training: Ah yes, you need to train to get results. That’s simple right? Yes it is but definitely not easy when you’re and stressed and tired from work and there’s family and social commitments, not to mention the little voice in your head saying “it’s not going to hurt to just miss one session”. As coach Vinnie stated in a recent blog post “After coaching for a number of years, it is clear that if the athlete has done the training, he/she will perform well at a race. Period. End of story.”

Turning down the noise: There’s tons of it out there, from all the adverts for the latest and greatest gadgets, what your mates are doing, what the forum guru is telling you, and even more so, the paralysis of understanding what the data spitting out from your heart rate, power, GPS gizmos are telling you. The idea of turning down the noise is really simple. Shutting it out and turning it off may not be that easy, however it is well worth it when you do. It clears your mind and allows you to focus on the training when you do.

Consistently putting all the above together is what it WILL take to start seeing greater improvement in your triathlon results.

It’s fairly SIMPLE but it’s NOT always EASY. It’s going to take discipline, it’s going to take a great deal of focus, it’s takes some will power and it certainly takes effort.

But when it’s all said and done, the PROCESS is SIMPLE.

So go on and be the BEST you can be.

Kristian

It all started in IM Malaysia dubbed the “Toughest Show on Earth” with three ironguides athletes posting huge PB’s while also finishing in the top 20 overall! The following weekend again ironguides athletes backed up the results from Malaysia with more PB’s, one of those athletes posted the 3rd fastest time ever in his AG! We also had a 3rd overall and grabbed more Kona spots.

We are looking forward to more great results this weekend in Singapore 70.3 and then Ironman Australia the following weekend.

If your serious about getting results, and even getting one of those coveted spots to Kona then sign up for one of our coaching options or see our downloadable training plans that one athlete went 8:28 after following for 12 weeks!

We don’t joke when we say  Your Best is our Buisness!

Kristian

I had dreamt of hearing those words for a long time, and now on my 9th Ironman it had become a reality. Lining up in Busselton was always on the cards after racing in Kona and I had set 3 goals for myself.

The first was to get on the podium, which would also ensure goal number two, get a slot to Kona and the third if all going well was to break 9 hours again. I can say I had a great day achieving the three goals and it might be a while before I wipe the smile off my face ?

I positioned myself right on the front line for the swim and then we were off. Two strokes in I copped a stinger across the face. It was a tough task trying to pull the thing off without getting swum over in the chaotic mass of swimmers, I did manage to get rid of it but was left with some nasty welts on my face. The first five hundred meters or so went well and then it felt like the handbrake got put on.

My swim training had gone well but something was not going right and I was getting passed by a lot of swimmers and I couldn’t even stay on feet to get a draft. I spent most of the swim solo trying to keep positive, as Ironman is a long day.

Exiting the water I realised I hadn’t started my stopwatch and the clock was showing 1:10:xx which was the pro start clock so I had thought I’d swum around the 55 minutes which ended up being 56:26.

I quickly got out onto the bike course and got in to a nice steady rhythm from the get go. My legs felt awesome and I was sitting on around 38km/hr and hardly breathing. Approximately 15km in I was passed and this athlete provided a nice steady pace slightly quicker then me and even riding at 10 metres back there is a definite advantage as it provides a good focus.

Coming into the first turn at 22km, I could get an idea of where I was, not in terms of my age group but age group over all. There wasn’t that many now in front and we definitely set our sights on swallowing up as many as we could.

At 55k we caught a pack of five, which had the eventual second place getter in my age group (whom I’d battle it out with on the run later in the day). We settled in here and about a quarter way through the second lap I felt the pace slow too much and we had a large pack behind. So I took to the front and pushed the pace to around the 40km/hr mark for the next 25 minutes or so, then two of us swapped doing the workload with the others sitting in pretty.

At each turn I noticed the large pack behind getting closer and closer and the other athlete sharing the workload got annoyed and put in a pretty huge effort to get away. I made an executive decision to stay put, as I knew that pack would eventually get us and they did on the way back out of town on the third lap.

Now it was just the task of staying legal and not getting a penalty, the pack also gave me an opportunity to sit off the back for awhile to relieve the bladder pressure I had be carrying for nearly two hours… with the nature break out of the way I steadily rode back up to the front nearing the final turn around before heading home.

Fortunately we had a couple of draft busters with us that split the group up “a little” by the time we hit T2. At this stage I knew I had ridden under 4h 50 but the sole focus now was running into and then maintaining a podium spot.

I got my silly socks (compression socks) on and my new Nike lunar racers and was out onto the run course. My legs felt really good and I dialled in my mid 90’s stride rate from the get go. I passed about four guys by the first aid station only too loose all those places and more after an Austin Powers long pee stop! I just can’t do the pee and run thing.

Now I felt better and I was off, chasing down as many guys in front of me as possible. One of my athletes who were watching told me I was in fourth, so my task was set.

By the first turn around I had passed quite a few guys but none in my age group and I now had one in my sights. He obviously had a different thought as he put the hammer down and put some serious time into me. I think he was around 600m in front and I just couldn’t close the gap.

I ran through the first 14k in 59:59, which was bang on target, my running felt great and I wasn’t concerned that 3h marathon pace was too quick. I was confident and just kept my stride rate up. It really started to heat up on the westward stretch and we were now running into a solid headwind.

Throughout the 2nd lap I just wasn’t gaining that much time on my competition and started to think they must want it more. Then I thought no way! I want this more and I was definitely on the hunt. Coming down to the turn around near the start finish area I had significantly closed the gap on the only person I knew in my age group.

He walked through an aid station heading out of the turn around and I thought that’s it I have you now! It took me another 3k or so to catch and pass him but he tucked in and stayed with me for a couple of k’s. I just kept really focused on running solidly and I could hear his breathing pattern increase, then nothing…

I am not sure when I passed all the guys in my age group but I think it was all within the last 12k. It was then I started to do the math on my finishing time and since I didn’t start my watch from the swim, I just turned it over to real time and knew to go under 9 hours I had to be in before 3:15pm.

I knew this was going to hurt but my thoughts turned to “its only 30mins of running left, how many long training runs have you done finishing the last 30min HARD?” I can do this and I mentally hit my staples “Easy Button” and went for it.

In actuality it didn’t hurt that much, I was so focused and running down that finish chute knowing I had ticked off some goals felt great. I just didn’t know if I had won or not until I heard the words from race commentator Pete Murray. It was then I went NUTS!!!

Obviously I have some people to thank. Firstly my wife and 2nd female across the line Charlotte Paul, I would not be the athlete or person I am without her. She sets a pretty high bar to follow and I love her for that.

Then there’s ironguides, the coaching and lifestyle facilitation company I am a part of. The word is getting out that our coaching philosophy “The Method” is second to none and we are powering the new generation of champions ™. A special thanks to Coach Vinnie for helping me achieve this result.

Thanks also go out to Bernard from Scody, Charlottes and my race kit not only made us look great but they did everything you want a race kit to do.  Nicole and Craig from Aqua shop and Guy from Blue Seventy. If you’re racing in Australia and want to start the race with your wetsuit on perfectly, Nicole and Craig work tirelessly to ensure this for all athletes.

Sam from 3T, those Ventus bars rock, super comfy all day, Sheridan from Oakley, Mike and the two Chris’s at Nike, Macy and the crew at Timex, John from High5, Shane, Tiff and Rod from Tri Travel, Mathew from BioCeuticals, Dallas and Kim at IMG and everyone that sent Charlotte and I well wishes before the race.

The road is now set for Kona 09 and the chance to hold a wooden bowl above high above my head.

Cheers
Kristian

Great implementation, and a job well done. I have the feeling that’s just the tip of the ice berg!

Kristian

This article is the follow up to my first article in which I introduced sport specific strength training and the basis for including this type of training in your triathlon training program. These two articles are for the age group triathlete who is in his or her late 30’s and older.  For age group triathletes, we are trying to slow down the aging process(decline in production of the male hormone testosterone and the loss of relative strength each year) and maintain the highest level of fitness possible.

• Big gear work on the bike at a very low cadence
• Swimming with hand paddles and pull buoy to create a steady “drip drip drip” of resistance training
• Running off the bike and longer moderate grade hills
  

1. Complete this for 20-30 minutes as instructed.  Start with the skate board swim drill  (http://www.teamtbb.com/forum/index.php?topic=827.0).    Complete this exercise for 30-60 seconds and then move to 10-15 push ups followed by air squats with feet as wide as your pedals on the bike while holding a weight at your chest.  This is followed by 6-8 pull ups.  This would be one round and you complete as many rounds as possible in the 20-30minute period of time.

2. Thruster set which is between 100 - 200 reps total.  Start at 100 reps and over time build up to 200 reps.  This exercise has you holding a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level and then perform a squat followed immediately by the shoulder press - this movement is continued at a steady pace.  Rest intervals will have to be built in as your fatigue level increases.  This exercise also works you core and hips for stability and control.

3. Pull up - Push up rotation has you first complete 1 pull up (if pull ups are difficult you can complete a jump pull up) and then drop down and complete 1 full push up. Repeat this rotation 40 times to start with and as you progress slowly work up to 75 rounds.

4. The “55″ grind which starts with 10 reps and then moves down to 9, then 8 and so on all the way to 1 rep.  Pick three exercises and work through the rotation of 10 reps with each exercise and then move to 9 reps for each.  One example would be 10 push ups, then right into 10 knees to elbows or ankles to bar (hang from a pull up bar and lift your knees to your elbows or ankles to the bar), and then follow with an air squat while holding a weight at your chest for 10 reps.  Then start again with the push ups for 9 reps and continue this until you work down to 1 rep of each.

5. Lunge and press is completed on the track.  Hold a weight at your chest(start with 20-25lbs and slowly increase the amount over time)then take 5 walking lunge steps followed by pressing the weight over your head 5 times.  Then back to 5 walking lunges again.  This rotation continues for 200 meters as the early goal.   Over time the goal is to complete 400meters which usually takes at least 30-40 minutes to complete.

Steve Fluet, Coach
www.ironguides.net

* * * Your best is our business.™ * * *

It doesn’t take long to see the benefits of repeating a sound program using the principles of The Method so imagine the difference when you have 6-12 months with consistant application, training by the way of the method! Exciting time indeed.

Awesome job Pete and looking forward to big things in the coming months.

Kristian